The Scandinavian rule that every designer should follow

“yes! but we are creative people. one common trait of the creative people is to have high self-confidence, hence the “big ego”..”

True, we are not alone. artists in different creative fields (painters, filmmakers, novelists …etc) are renowned for their “big ego”. sometimes being complete jerks as well.

The bad news is: designers are not artists, therefore we can’t be jerks and expect everyone to be ok with it.

The difference is that artists’ work is to render *their own* personal perspectives, emotions and beliefs. and then they *choose* to expose their art to the audience. Ideally, the audience opinion or interpretation of the artwork shouldn’t actually matter. and even when it comes to co-workers, ideally the artist hires them to use their skills to implement his/her vision of the artwork under his/her guidance. On the other hand, we are designers. which means:

We design artifacts for people. with people.

To some extent, any good designer understands the “For people” part. Empathy is vital (and actually the first) part of the design thinking process. User research is a respected discipline in most of the design teams. … etc.

The problem lies in the “With people” part. many designers forget that we -usually- are not the only stakeholders of what we are designing. we are usually a part of a team. and if we cannot communicate well with them because of an attitude problem, we will most probably fail to achieve what we are aiming for altogether.